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Monday, February 27, 2012

Today at the office the
conversation turned to the media and their habit of only reporting bad news. It
started with some mentions about news in Kenya. i sat there thinking how formulaic
it always is, poltics, hunger and corruption following each other in an
inevitable trinity of tragedy. So the question is are journalists to blame for
bad news?

Here’s the thing it’s easy to
blame journalists, they report the bad news. They don’t unearth good news and
give us stories of survival unless they are immediately attached to some horror
or the other. All we have is drudgery and death, all we get is misery and
mayhem. Why is it like that unless it’s because the people seeking out the news
only care about what’s bad. Selling newspapers is the first consideration, the effect on the people, the misery constant bad news brings is only secondary.

This is why this argument breaks
down for me; Given, economics is the driver of many of our businesses. If a
company is a legal person then their nourishment, the very air they breathe is
profits. Their motivation is run by the need to gain profit. Economic concerns
are the major problem. But why is it that a consideration of economics leads to
a reporting of bad news. Why is it there exists a proverb like no news is bad news?

Mirrors have to face inward at
some point and this may be it. The newspapers printed aren’t sold to TV
reporters only and the tv news isn’t just watched by print journalists. It’s
not journalists running the demand of these things up its normal, ordinary
people. People attracted by grime and grim news, people drawn to stories of
drama and disaster, people in need of conflict and corrosion. Look at the
movies we watch, the books we read. There has to be something at stake,
something interesting almost otherworldly when compared to our daily lives. At
gossip sessions the most rapt people are those surrounding the one with a story
so juicy it stains the reputation of others.

We like bad news, we love it as a
people and so it is provided to us free of charge, entertainment that has the
added value of being free and there’s the thrill of it having real life
consequences and results. We want to see the accidents reported on and we
thrive on the election scandals. But that’s not all of us. Some are better
adjusted than others and some don’t want the bad news. There are interesting stories
that uplift the soul, filling it with joy and hope, that’s what a lot of people want.

Maybe it’s easier to sell a sad
story, easier to dress up a tragedy and make it appealing, maybe its laziness.
Maybe it’s not just human nature that makes us like this. What if its because all we have been brought up on is a diet of misery that we don't know what to do with a plate of joy?
It is possible that conditioning has changed us and the effect of the media on
us is so much huger than we like to admit. So huge that it even changes the way
we perceive it and decide for us what we would like from it.

The most
read things in the world are newspapers, TV news is omnipresent, the internet
has more news than porn, well that was hyperbole if you stack up all the sites
that aren’t porn against the ones that are, porn wins, more bad news. Our souls
may have been wired to look for the good but the incessant badgering of the bad
changed our minds on us making us think this was what we wanted. Maybe we
aren’t happy when we watch bad news and sad stories; maybe we just think we
are.

But this begs the question of
when this started. There was a time before touch button news before all you
needed was a server to get the news. There was a time of strife and stress
where getting the news involved work and smoke. It involved birds and being
atop horse or leg for days. Back then there was no good news. Who would send long
messages of happiness when the sad messages were so much more important? A
village dying of an epidemic is something the next village needs to know, a
foreign war is important, a drought, blight on the crops these are titbits that
need to spread.

And isn’t that one function of
the media to warn and spread bad news. To ask for assistance and help, to
report on the earthquake so that we know about it and can send help, to report
on massacres so we can seethe in collective international outrage which only
blossoms into action when oil is needed. To hear about disease outburst so that
we are ready with the vaccines. To know, just to know what’s happening in the
world.

If you consider that bad news is
infinitely more important than good then you start to see that the news shaped
the media long before the media had a chance to shape us. The news changed the purveyors
of it. It gave them a duty to say what was wrong, to collect the evils
unpunished and the diseases unchecked. The news was important and still is so
that we can know to do something. So the very nature of what was important made
it necessary for the media transmitting it to change.

It helps to remember that
journalists are human beings and they are human beings surrounded by tragedy.
They aren’t gleeful at the sight of it especially when their whole lives are
steeped in it. It soaks their socks and fucks with their fingers. Day after day
they are out there reporting on something that’s sad and horrible. It’s where
they spend their days. We’re shocked by the excesses of our politicians,
journalists are cynical, we are horrified at the effects of a famine, they
are jaded. The emotions they bury in relation to the work they do are so far
beyond our normal comprehension. It’s the shutter between the camera and the
man, the pen and the journalist. It’s a requirement that life must be lived not
feeling as fully as other people can because then it will leak through and
cause permanent damage.

This is not the life people
choose for themselves. Artistic tendencies bring people into journalism, a flair
for writing, a skill at photography. All these are gifts that require a certain
amount of communing with nature, require you to develop a certain rapport with
your fellow man and the earth you inhabit and having this extra sensitivity you
are exposed daily to the excesses of man and nature. It gets wearing pretty
soon. But your talent turns into a responsibility to make a show of the world,
to refract your vision of the world and show it as news. Sad news, heart-breaking
news day in, day out.

Think of the doctor who takes
your x-rays, as soon as the machine is switched on he hides behind his lead
protection leaving you to suck in the light. This is because of the potential of daily exposure, too much
of anything soon becomes dangerous. Think of the x-ray as the misery of the
world and the doctor as the one who brings it into your life. It’s too much and
they are hurt by its glare constantly turning crispy and for what?

The argument comes down to
whether we control the market or the market controls us running amok and doing
what it thinks is best with humans having at best a consultative status. This
is it. There are considerations of human interest and the age old
responsibility messengers have to deliver messages of value to us. But we would rather believe that it is the harsh light of economics that dispels the need for better, well happier news.

Is it easier to give the people
what they want or to trick them into wanting something else? That’s the
ultimate question when it comes to why there is always bad news. Could it be that
people like bad news or is it that they are led to believe they do?

Granted the revelling in misery
is too much at times. However when the media is silenced the people suffer,
when the media is allowed freedom it morphs and changes. Its no longer a challenging
crusader of the masses, its not a knight fighting in the shadows, its something
real. Something accessible. Its controlled by the same forces that control the
price of salt; flailing human attention and the demands of supply. Its not
mythical anymore and its flaws and foibles are there for all to see. It’s a fact that I would lead with the story of
loss before that of life. It’s a fact that most of us would. The media focused us on a big mirror and the thing about big mirrors they exaggerate
your warts and your flaws. You see greed times ten, you see the love for bad
news multiplied to grotesque proportions and you want to turn away. Looking into yourself can be so much worse than looking into the abyss because you don't have the comfort that the darkness you see isn't one of your own creation.

So don’t blame journalists, not all the way,
they could of course do better. But when we find that we are blaming a segment
of society whose job it is to shine a light on the rest of society we should remember that it’s not the torches fault that roaches
scatter in its wake.

Monday, February 20, 2012

The thing about winter
sports is that on your first try you will
experience more falls than a tsar who is Lenin during a war, and with that
revolutionary turn of phrase…

It was a beautiful day,
the sun was shining on the snow turning those unique DNA strands of the weather
into separate diamond pieces, the ice was melting in its place and weirdly
becoming harder as a result but none of this mattered, we had been given skis
and ski we would.

You see we live in
Kristiansand in the south of Norway a beach and summer town a place where the
sun and the sea stop to have a chat and in the months of winter a brief, brisk affair a promise of love and longevity. It doesn’t snow every winter and when it does it’s up to you to
experience it before the rain comes and washes it away leaving behind only
stone, cold and wind.

I was dropped off with
one of my co-delegates and we were given the most rudimentary directions
imaginable, how to put them on, how to take them off and a nod in the direction
of the park. There are ski tracks prepared every couple of days in the snowy
parks so that enthusiasts without the talent and skill can still slide downhill
without breaking their bones, it was to this ski paths that we would stay or at
least try to.

I put on my shoes and
immediately felt strange. Skis are long planks of wood to which you attach the
ski shoes, immediately it feels like you are wearing shoes that are 3 feet long
in either direction mostly because they are and every step becomes strained. It’s
impossible to turn around like normal because you’ll knock into yourself or
someone else, added to this is the fact that you’re on ice and am not good on
ice. Am not good on stone and fall even back in Nairobi, the first time I
skated it was that bambi video:

but i had since then improved my balance skills. The sticks or stava
were long enough and provided an extra layer of support and soon I was off
towards the track. I placed the skis there and it being a gentle slope began to
glide ever so slowly almost snow-like into the real track. It was easy, I was a
natural, I found myself walking up a hill with an incline of maybe 10 degrees maybe
less to be perfectly honest but I was doing it, I slid down the hill and tried
to climb another this incline a little steeper,

Sooner though I was
sliding back then I was falling and I was on the floor. It’s hard to get up
when you are wearing skis, the length of them is prohibitive, your ankle can’t
even turn the right way, and you constantly feel like you have to cross your
legs over each other to be in the right and now you find the skis crisscrossed
and impossible. My legs can do this thing where one faces one way, lets say north and the other faces opposite which would be south

And so that’s what I
did, it was just the easiest way of extricating myself from the mess I was in
and then I started sliding back that way, and then I fell. It’s going to be a
story of falls, (with every other punctuation being a plotline involving me and
the snow.)However after finding myself
in ten minutes back at the place I started I saw my friend, his skis were
greaseless or something, they wouldn’t move an inch in the ice, they would just
slip and slide and he was exactly where I had left him struggling to move and
not being able to obviously very frustrated.

A man walking his dog stopped to help us, he encouraged me to go up the opposite hill, the
incline was a little lower but it looked considerable, like there was
acceleration to be arrived at there. He told me to just walk up it so I could
find my balance and I tucked my skis under my elbow to do this. I got to the
end of this hill with maybe a 20 degree
incline and (should stop calling them hills, they were rather smaller) and slid
down. The slide down is the point of skiing just like James bond I put my sticks
under my elbow and skied all the way down, soon stopped because I was going so
slowly but it gave me the motivation I needed to conquer more hills. up again, try again..

And I was whooshing
too, the speed was picking up and I felt almost in heaven, I wanted to go
further and could because past this incline was another, the first one I had conquered
and if I just took this corner, just turned the skis ever so slightly so I
would be in the track then it would be… I fell straight forward and the white
ice rushed up to punch me in the face.

There’s something about
being hit in the face without preparation, something about sucker punches when
you’re not looking. It’s like the surprise of the pain equals the pain itself
and can even numb it. Your brain reacts to the shock of its slow reaction as
much as it reacts to the shock of you being hit and you feel woozy. If it’s a
good sucker punch like the one the ice gave me, it breaks some skin and there’s
blood in your mouth. A warm crimson liquid warming your insides but forcing you
to spit it out, it mixes with the saliva to become an orange shadow of the
blood it once was and it feels so much worse than it actually looks. It’s
disheartening and in no time at all I had given my friend the skis to try it
out.

As we sat lacing up a
Norwegian passed us skiing, he wasn’t following the designated paths, he was
making his own, his feet working like opposite windshield wipers to push away
ice and move him forward, his sticks an extension of his arm, his body an
extension of the ice, moving effortlessly even up the inclines as if he moved
by thought and not action. That’s what I want to do I thought grimly but all I
could was sit and nurse my mouth as my friend went round and round.

I once read a
fictionalised account of Caesar’s Gallic invasions and they had an effect on me. There’s a scene when he and his
men come in sight of Britain and instead of pushing forward and forging new
borders for the Roman Empire turn around snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, turning back the wheels of human progress. Jeremy Clarkson of top gear
compared the decommissioning of the Concorde, that great supersonic bird, to
this act of turning back at the moment which may not have changed everything
but it possibly could. This had a profound effect on me. It’s what got me back
on the skis and what made me decide maybe before I left that I would finish the whole course.

what i really do.

For the skiing arena is
arranged like a racecourse, you can go round the whole series of inclines and falls
and come back where you started without turning back even once but it’s dangerous for beginners. As I stood contemplating an old man
engaged me in conversation,

“I was born skiing and I wouldn’t go out in
this weather.”

“Really?” I asked
showing surprise in order to elicit more information.

“well I wasn’t really
born skiing”(interjection to just say again that Norwegians have a great sense
of humour)”I meant the weather, the ice is too hard and melting in parts, the
only people who go skiing today are those who are really good and reckless. Do you see many other
skiers today here? No? There’s probably a reason for that.”

Challenge accepted

As soon as it was my
turn to use the proper pair of skis I knew I was going to push myself as far as
I could. After the first incline is a hill that was 40 degrees and I went down
it. I was scared and I moved fast, so fast but the problem was how quick it was
over and how soon I was coming to my first fall. Here I learned that skiing is
about fear, overcoming and giving in to it in equal measure. I would approach a
hill swaggering with false bravado and then at the last moment just before the
real rush came, just before I had crested the next challenge and was rushing
with the wind downhill would deliberately trip myself. Falling if only to get
some brakes and get some control.

It was safety I told
myself but thinking about it now maybe it’s a fact of my life that I don’t give
in all of myself. I can when the stakes are low but I had fallen on ice and
broken a lip, I had spat blood and now there were consequences. Pain, real and
imagined fuelled my paranoia, my fear of more pain at times realer than the
rush of a downhill slide. And so I trip myself before I can be completely at
the mercy of the slope, I find a way out, a soft landing in the snow to avoid
the reality of life that proclaims that blood on the ice is the only way to
live and to learn.

what the world thinks i do.

While skiing you go
downhill in a whoop of joy and then you have to ascend a hill. You have to
arrange your feet to face away from each other and infuse your thumbs with
remarkable tensile strength. You have to walk up ice and snow which claim you back
as surely as gravity and sometimesyou fall back, sometimes you don’t.

I met some more old men
taking a walk, they said yes it was hard to ski and wanting to impress them by
my daring and courage I let them know this was my first time skiing. Braking is
hard they told me, I laughingly agreed that it was impossible and one of them
said to me nothing is impossible.

It was what I needed to
hear right then, I let go and pushed off. The tracks were perfect and I bent
just so. The wind was whistling past my ears not ready to touch them and I felt
invincible. Smoothing my way down the hill finally knowing what it feels like
to be one with the ice when there was another corner to navigate, I have no
idea how fast I was moving right then but its as fast as I ever have while not
on an animal or in a car, it’s as fast as I have ever fallen when I went
straight past the tracks and heaped into snow.

Now there was a pain in
my shoulder and I thought about consequences and for the first time in a
selfishly long time I thought that I had left my friend waiting for me with the
implicit agreement that I would be back shortly. There was no way to turn back only
forward to go I told myself and am not sure if this was true or not.

All I know is I felt
selfish. I crested hills of increased difficulty, dragging myself up the
inclines, digging the sticks in and sweating in the snow. I thought about the
fact of this act, of the selfishness in it. Character flaws have to be dug into
and you have to physically pull yourself out of the abyss. Bad habits and vices
pull you back as surely as gravity and I thought that the I of some months ago
would have done something so selfish, the me of some minutes ago had, no change.
Then he would have justified it just as I had by feeling and encouraging all
the aches and pains that formed a map in my body. Thinking that feeling guilty
at doing wrong was the same or close enough as not to matter as not doing
wrong.

To these heavy brooding
thoughts was added the beginnings of a seed of desperation. I began to fear
that I may not make it back to the beginning, I should have been there already,
I should have gone all the way round, an hour of skiing, even as slowly as I
was going was too long. I called my friend and guiltily allowed him to leave me
behind. This despite the fact that I had no idea where this place was in
relation to home, another punishment I was preparing for myself.

Then I came to the top
of the hill and I looked down and it was fearsome and awe inspiring. Steepest
incline yet and I wanted to rush down it. A part of me was cautious warning of
broken bones, a part guilty telling of broken bonds, a part weary, depressed
and uncertain completely uncertain that there was any more to be found from
going forward, a part was fatalistic,
having given up all hope in where I had come from the only way forward was where I was going. And here is the beauty of
skiing; as soon as I pushed off from the top of the hill, as soon as I was sure
of my footing and I knew in my heart even though my head denied it that I would
not fall, as soon as the speed and the snow and me were one the rest of me didn’t matter so much. I was
still fighting all these emotions but the sound had been turned down. The
blaring music had been given a respite by the wind headphones that gliding down
the hill had gifted me. Everything faded away except me, the snow and the
speed.

what i think i do

I crashed again, I
crashed numerous times. The tracks would suddenly come to an end challenging me
to find my way forward by myself and as much as I hate to admit it I never rose
to the challenge. Am not sure I could have done it but am sad i didn’t try. The
end seemed so far off but finally there was a light, a familiar sight and 90
minutes later I glided to a stop where I had begun.

The sense of
achievement was amazing. On this one of the worst days I had gone all the way
round. But there was no one to celebrate my triumph. In my mind I had pictured
the amazement of my friend as he watched me come down a different hill than the
one I had gone up. The envy he would feel at me having completed the course but
there was nothing there now. Just a bag and shoes waiting for me. The
achievements of life often leave you on pinnacles, the problem with pedestals
is they are only peopled by one at a time and when from here you survey your
icy kingdom the soul yearns for the simpler joys of friendships and family much
more meaningful than the cold comfort of platitudes and prizes.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

And so we sat around cups of coffee boiled, filtered
and poured. Our thoughts silent, considered and cautious.

There’s something about coffee and tragedy, am not
sure what, am not sure whether or not its movies or the nature of coffee itself
beans picked by tired labourers, washed till the water runs blood with mud,
dehusked in a torrent of water, dried in the baking heat, roasted in an oven
and served in a steaming cup of scalding water. Dark cups and dark thoughts,
sour taste, sour memories. It sits there dark and brooding. It sits there smoking and
cooling. It sits there bleeding in heat, burning in steam and as you consider it
considers you.

The tragedy?

Kenyan roads. I work for an organisation here in
Norway with offices down in Kenya where among other things they organise study
tours for high school students. The realities are so different between Norway
and any third world country, so vastly different that seeing it is the only way
that any of the problems we suffer with any sense. The young are encouraged to travel,
to see the world and learn it with endless tours and choices for them to make
as regards their travel.

For
the last 2 weeks a group of them were down in Kenya then on Sunday there was an accident. One dead, one in the hospital, the rest shocked and traumatised. I
can’t begin to imagine the loss that parents feel when they lose one of their
children and I can only guess that it must feel worse when the child is that
far away. At this time all I can give is my condolences at this horrible
tragedy.

The stats aren’t easy to find, I’ve spent quite some
time scouring Google in search of them, in 2009 3,760 people died as a result of Kenyan road accidents according to the World Health
Organisation. This means a little more than ten people a day died every day for
this year. That’s not ten accidents a day, they’re not all fatal. Its ten
bodies

Ten lives a day snuffed out in road accidents.

wasn’t
it just last year that another organisation that I was associated with had a
horrible accident on those Kenyan roads. In August last year an accident marred the coming
together of AIESEC youth from all over the world in my dear country of Kenya.
One sad day in august after attending an international congress and on the way
to Mombasa a bus crashed, one died and one was injured.

When I was younger (and to this day) I was very
careless, I would drop a plate when washing it and a thermos when pouring tea.
It happens once and it’s an accident, these things can’t be avoided and the
pieces are swept under the rug so to speak. But I once went on a streak
breaking plate after cup after thermos till my father lay me on the ground and
beat me. This was one of the beatings that survived in my memory from when I
was young. It’s all an accident I thought how could he justify beating me for
something that was essentially an act of god? But the deitifically ordained
acts stopped soon thereafter. An accident happens and it’s an accident but if
it keeps happening it can no longer be referred to by that moniker.

How
about the Msongari School bus crash? That was just last year too. A school trip, a bus full of girls in their
preteens and a horrible accident. Deaths and amputations, blood and tragedy. My
cousin was on that bus and she saw these things happen. I hear her talk about
it and I can’t imagine that I could ever have been that strong or that she
should have to be.

These three happened in the last year, in less than
12 months. These are the accidents I heard about on Kenyan roads and I only
heard about them because of my personal stake. The only reason I could remember
was because of my association.

How many others slipped through the cracks and in
the smoke of the aftermath curled into the mists of oblivion? Not mentioned in
my head, not remembered in my brain?

3,000 deaths pass the realm of the accidental. 3,000
death passes into carelessness. Our roads are potholed and poor true, our
traffic lights irregular and indecent but our drivers are also rash and
reckless. How many stories have we as young people heard about people driving
while being so steaming drunk they could have powered a locomotive? The stories
are fun to hear no doubt, told by people with a flair for making light of these
situations, “I didn’t move towards the roundabout, it came to me…”

There is a law requiring people to drive at less than
80 km\h if they are operating a public service vehicle. It is more openly
flouted and with greater impunity than even the one banning pornography. In
Norway it costs about 20,000 kr, to get a license, that’s (to use purchase
power parity instead of exchange rates) what the average professional considers
a good salary. Forget the price. In Kenya the economic structure would mean
that those most in need of the license so that they could get a job would be
locked out. Behind this price is tests and tests and tests.

The drivers stop for you when you’re on a zebra
crossing! They slow down and let you pass. This doesn’t happen in Kenya. A
Ugandan I met here says that Africans don’t need democracy just discipline, no
economic reforms or infrastructure just inner drive. A fidelity to rules and a
willingness to live by them.

What is our government doing I began to wonder. The
government any government is made up of people. People who have these same
feelings, who feel empathy and can, ask themselves what if? What if I was in
that situation? What if one of my peoples was? What if someone I knew was mowed
down by a car? And then it happened again? What if?

Thank God my cousin did not die, but someone’s
cousin did in that bus crash. Three crashes with fatalities that have a link to
me that’s more direct than I like to think about. Something happened and is
happening in Kenya.

Kenya is the most valuable country in the world to
me. The things it holds I cannot measure, not the earth by itself or some vague
sense of nationalism that is slowly making itself felt, but the people. The
roads are not safe; they are grey snaking lines of doom. Lines drawn like
nooses around my family and friends. Around other people’s family and friends.

I have no solutions for this, I can’t even drive.
Just a faint nagging feeling that this isn’t right. 0.01% of the Kenyan
population is lost to tarmac every year. If you are not infected you are
affected they say about AIDS but with numbers like that they could soon say the
same about roads.

I have no solutions and no idea where to search them
out but I drank that bitter dark cup of coffee today. Maybe someone else does.

Monday, February 13, 2012

The arguments against Valentine’s Day are all crap. Especially
the one where someone says, “how can you pick one day a year to show your love
and then not do it all year round, that’s fake. It’s not genuine.” Usually
these people won’t say this about Christmas
and Jesus, they won’t say this about birthdays
and themselves and they won’t say this about independence days and their
countries.

I don’t think it’s corny to buy flowers especially since as
the guy you only have them at the beginning of the day; the resulting hay fever
is never a pox on your house. There’s nothing wrong with a movie or a dinner,
there’s nothing wrong with a gift so well thought out it makes everything else
pale in significance. Sometimes the only argument for something isn’t words,
logic or rationalisation; it is not contradiction, dissent or falsification. Actions
speak louder than words and though these actions are words… the argument is it can lead to such thought.

From Kevin to Stacey…

Sonnet 17

by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topazor the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,I love you simply, without problems or pride:I love you in this waybecause I don't know any other way of lovingbut this, in which there is no I nor you,so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,so intimate that when I fall asleepit is your eyes that close.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

And that dear readers is how a check for 140 million dollars
looks. Am sure noone who reads my blog has ever had 140 million dollars to spare
and so there’s a chance that some may think that when you get to such dastardly levels of money they give you a coloured chequebook sort of like that black
card(but I prefer the term African
American express- awesome Kanye line-)

That up there is a painting by Jackson Pollack, the name of
the painting is number 5, the price tag of the painting is 140 million dollars.
Why am I writing about this painting and the absurd number of dollars it
collected, well the beginning goes something like this. I live in a small town of about 80,000 people. A huge
population of that nearly 8,000 are university students and they study in the University
of Agda. Google maps tells me all I have to do is cross the bridge and keep
walking and sooner or later I will get to the university. The truth is it’s
later, much, much later. An hour+ of walking is needed to get you there.

Walking is nice, there’s a cool(well freezing) breeze, the air is fresh,
the bridge takes you over a river. I
can’t explain why I love water bodies so much or why they represent such huge
sounds of freedom, calm and fight to me. Maybe because I come from a
landlocked area(I know Kenya isn’t but with Nairobi 8 hours away from the
nearest coast it practically is.) maybe it’s a little of genetic memory left
over from the fact that my ancestors followed the Nile down to Lake Victoria
and made their home there fishing, living, loving and dying within downward
drainage distance of the lake. Whatever it is I love lakes and rivers and seas, I love
piers and waterfronts, I love boats and ships. I love the sound of the sea and
the rush of the river, I love the big magic O of the ocean and passing over a
river makes me happy whenever I chance to do it.

1 hour + later we came to the uni, it’s a nice place, big
and adorned. They let anyone inside this vast library they have that has row
upon row of books. Not all academic not all Norge, there’s biographies of Martin Luther King jr. of Bill Clinton and even of New York city, a book that’s
knighted quite rightly Gotham. Then there are the paintings. Row upon blessed
row of paintings on the walls, some with obvious skill attached to them, there
was a cowl with a scowl. a portrait of the assassin from the creed, the albino from the code(Da).
He has a monk’s suit up to his head and his covered in graphite for its a pencil painting and within it you can see texture and colour. You can feel different emotions emanate depending on how you as a
person feel, he could be scowling or glowing, threatening or treating.

This is not him, this is something
entirely else, this is the introduction to abstract art. To explain picture
quality; I have seen strange things since I came to Europe, things I wouldn’t
have imagined happened here in Norway the country that did not feel the pinch
of the economic crisis of 08. Two brown outs at home, internet speeds of 700
kb. And lastly a camera that doesn’t come with rechargeable batteries. The
picture quality has been getting worse and worse as the battery gets less and
less. Well since there are no visual aids I’ll just say it’s a picture I could
do without seeing.

This is woman 3 by William de Kooning, price
tag 137.5 million. Why? I don’t get it. And there it is I don’t get abstract
art and I feel like ammissing out on something. It could be a scam couldn’t
it? The emperor’s new clothes on an arty level, a bubble started by an art
critic who unbeknownst to us is the grandson of woman 1 and entitled to a good
chunk of the change. But it’s probably not.

Look at books or movies. They say read War and Peace by Tolstoy,
greatest Russian novel ever written perhaps greatest book on earth. They say
read Moby Dick by Melville, never has there been a greater
exploration of the effects of desire and revenge, a voyage not only into the
dark deep sea to harpoon a whale but a journey into the depths of man, of a man
in a quest to rid himself of the demons
he must face. I have never read Moby Dick
not that I haven’t tried, I gave it a shot. I took it from a friend’s house
because the critics and literature schools said
I should and I couldn’t. it was page after line of some of the most
inane crap i had read in a while, but
maybe I was young then, too young in my language, too impatient in myself to
truly enjoy a masterpiece, not at peace enough to let it seep into my
subconscious and live there altering what needed to be altered until I was left
a different man.

Maybe, because I read War
and Peace later in life and I loved it. I had it on pdf and I would sit at
the dining room table with the laptop on and read a chapter a day every day for
a month or so. All 900 pages of the pdf and I was so caught up in the story it
was ridiculous. There was a world of characters and like practice for later listens to A song of ice and fire(the universe encompassing books on which a game of thrones is based) I was caught up in all of them. All finely drawn and
nuanced, none of them white or black, all of them grey with struggle and soot,
all of them changing and different. I would miss someone if they were gone too
long because the book had taken the trouble to build them up minutely into full humans, then it would draw back and look at the society or discuss Napoleonic
war strategies and why the skill of the general matters not, it would take a look at a continent in crisis and confusion, at refugees and burning houses and rushes into battles that were more foolhardy than a suicide walk. And in the end it was a whole
book written as a philosophical argument against the way we read and write
history. And I loved it. There’s a chance that if these were switched in the
order read then I would have lauded dick
and loathed peace but we’ll never know.

My point is I have no idea why those paintings cost so much,
it may be a scam but that’s too simple, too easy a way to look at such a vast and
challenging industry. One that has been the abode of the intellectually well
off and the financially gifted. Only those with means could afford it and while
a fool and his money are soon parted I wouldn’t call anyone who has such
reserves of wealth a fool. I wasn’t smart enough to be born into such money and
so I hold my tongue. And the art professors, critics and professionals. They
seem smart. They have studied and they understand what is meant by
representational art, the words impressionist mean something to them. They
don’t lump the baroque together with the renaissance school and call it all
abstract. They take care to categorise and mark. They make note of brush
strokes and paint choices, of canvas layout and its relation to artist history.
They research the provenance of a piece before they recommend and they make a living
critiquing art.

Maybe like the book masterpieces am too young to understand
it. Too uneducated(in that field) to understand it. So I won’t bash it. But I won’t praise it either. Its making a fool of
yourself to worship a sun god in the winter(not but should be a Norwegian
saying-just saying.) I don’t understand it maybe if I knew enough I would but
until then I can take simple pleasure in the art I don’t have to learn to like,

the portrait of Dr. Gachet byVincent Van gogh

This is the portrait of Dr. Gachet by Vincent
van Gogh. He was an art genius we all know his name if not for his art at least for his ear or lack thereof and when I look at the print
of this painting I can understand why he's so praised. Dr. Gachet looks sad, he looks lonely
and heartbroken, no one has to be told this. He gazes off into the distance
with a kind of longing, a deep well of
longing, he wants something he cannot have. But in his eyes is acceptance, the
round oval light of a truck coming down a tunnel. Maybe one day he can look
back at his love as a lesson learnt but right now he cannot. Right now the
world doesn’t feel real to him, he’s in a wave of despair and it alters all
around him. His table and the things on it, his coat and the stitches in it,
they are distorted and distended, changed by grief. The air behind him is almost
a weight at least on itself, it presses down making more waves, mountains of
waves, blue, blue waves. that without lessons is to me a painting of hearbreak

Monday, February 6, 2012

January 7th was the last time the weather was nice, the last
time the sun kissed my skin, the last time I could wear sandals
outside. It was also a time of great expectation, I was leaving kenya, leaving
Africa for Europe that night. I had my visa or visum as they write it in Norge.
My e-ticket was printed, my clothes packed, my goodbyes said and being said. No
January blues for me was the only January news.

My family gathered to give me a send-off as they wouldn’t
see me till at least July, the other reason they gathered was that it was
January, the thing about my family is that they love parties. December had ripe
pickings for them. Every weekend something to do, food, people, alcohol, love
in abundance. Then January rolls around with its nothing. Its blue, broke
nothing. Then out of nowhere something to celebrate, a reason to gather. So
they came.

The flight was at 11 pm. They ask you to check in 3 hours
before the plane is to take off. This is
for security checks and such. First time travellers usually do just this, when
I went to Egypt I did. I was there even earlier, I was also drunk out of my mind, a source of constant amusement to the airport attendants and(now that
time has blunted the folly of that day) to my family too. I promised myself I
wouldn’t get on a plane that drunk again, it’s too scary and not fair to
everyone who is invested in your life and your travel.

At 9 we were at the airport, I met my two future housemates
there(the program, a Norwegian peace corps in conjunction with aiesec project)
was flying the three of us over there to experience Norwegian culture and work
ethic, sending 3 Norwegians to Kenya as an exchange. The lines were long and
drawn out. I said my goodbyes and got on the line then I saw my other housemates
dilly dallying and I immediately dillied too. This may have been the first
mistake because those airport lines fill up pretty fast and soon we were at the
back.

Past the security check we eventually went. Take off your
bags and put them on the conveyor, let them be x-rayed, pick them up at the other end, hear people
screaming your name, why? You forgot your passport bag on the belt. Wow.
Stupid. No more such mistakes.

There’s a weight limit of 46 kg divided in two bags of 23 kg
each. I hadn’t really paid attention to this for two reasons, I had only one
bag, the better prepared of my housemates was going to hook me up one and I
couldn’t see me carrying all that weight. When I got the other bag I put
everything that could fit in there before we had to go to weight check. We went
and wonder of wonders one of the bags was overweight by about 8 kg. Had to transfer things into this duffel bag
that i now had. The heavy things, books, shoes, and flour. By the time I was done
we were rushed to the check in counter since time was bad.

The girl housemate was there already and she had some news for us. The flight was overbooked. No seats for us. After that visa debacle I could just see this happening. Kenya airways seems to have a lot of this kind of thing. As we stood there a man was complaining because his family was going to be split up into different planes a result of overbooking I guessed. He looked like the Greek from season 2 of the wire and you could see his agitation printed on his face, he was angry, he was pissed and nothing was being done right for him. The attendant kept apologising with this smile printed on her face like one of the comedian's badges.

She told him to file a complaint with the airline.

A complaint wasn’t going to help him, he had children with
him, his wife and some other relations and they had presumably known they would
be going together. After a while he told her

“I know you’re just saying the things they taught you to
say, and I know it’s not your fault this is happening but it’s still wrong that
the airline condones this kind of practice.” I found that amazingly poignant.

Then it was our turn. We were referred to this guy, then
that and back again. The whole time they would speak to each other in Swahili
and this was ok because we understood but I felt for anyone else who had a
problem and couldn’t converse in this language. No direct information was given
us, only what you could glean from the scraps of overheard conversation. There
was a chance we weren’t leaving that night, after all the delays of the week I
couldn’t imagine this happening. But it worked out somehow and they put us on
the same flight they said had been overbooked. The baggage handlers who had
checked my bags had not put the sticker saying that the weight was ok and so
this guy had to check it again.as he did it he had the gall to hurry me up with
threats of being left as if his airline hadn’t been the cause of all the delay.

After check-in there’s a place in the airport that takes
your photo for storage purposes, whenever you go to JKIA after that they put in
your passport details and this photo comes up on screen. Mine came up, I looked
dreary, my eyes were bloodshot, I was using my palm to support my head in the
classic posture of a man who has some misery. Of course memories of this
picture were only on the computer and not my brain so I was shocked to see it,
how the hell did you get it I wanted to ask. Then I remembered that I wouldn’t
remember my first foray into the airport.

Up escalators we went to another check in. by now it was
really dark, it felt really hurried and I was all over the place, putting bags
down and out, taking my laptop away, removing my passport and handing it for
another check. There’s a no man’s land between two metal detectors at the
airport, a space for you to get organised before you go to the next and in this
no man’s land I realised I couldn’t find my passport. I had put my bags on the
conveyor belt and they had gone over to the other side so I thought maybe it too had
gone with them. I was in frenzy now, I wanted to cross over and look for it but
I had to keep taking off my clothes. I would rush to the other side, the metal
detector would beep, take off your shoes, I would rush it would beep, take off
your belt, I would rush it would beep… at this point I didn’t even care about
putting my shoes back on all i wanted was my passport. So barefoot, sweaty and in
a panic I rushed again and found it not to be there.

Shit!

Then a lady behind me handed it to me, I had dropped it
somewhere along the line, she smiled understandingly saying she had gone through
this kind of thing too. By a strange coincidence she was part of the entourage
of the Norwegian health minister in Kenya for a conference of some kind, she
had also being part of the Peace Corps in her youth.

On the plane I saw the Greek seated near us and hoped his issues had been solved, then I put
him out of my mind until just now. The thing about planes is I need an aisle
seat, I pee a lot, maybe too much and I can’t keep asking people to move. This
plane was huge, three rows of seats the ones on the windows two seaters and the
one in the middle a four seater. There was an upstairs, it sat 500+ people, I
was in awe. The other reason I will insist on an aisle seat when I travel is
the service. Plane flights are usually crap. You take off you stay in the air,
you land. The major advantage they hold over buses is the free alcohol. And
this was one I intended to make good use of.

“A bottle of red wine with dinner please,” being kind and
polite, smiling as you make a request goes a long way. Another thing that goes
a long way is remembering their names and faces then spreading the requests out
over all the air hostesses, you should also find out where the kitchen is so
you can walk back there every once in a while and ask for a drink directly.
This is how to get drunk on a plane. Red wine, red wine, red wine. Then I began
to drink brandy. Neat. I hadn’t yet watched a movie because the apparatus wastech mo loyo gi, at least at the beginning. When I did figure it out I found I
could watch an episode of mad men. So, more brandy. Neat.

that's what to drink too

The flight passed into oblivion and the plane passed into Amsterdam.
This airport is a small city with more signs and maps than Nairobi. It also has
one of my favourite new inventions, a horizontal escalator. It doesn’t go up or
down, just straight and when you walk down it you feel like you are flying, you
go faster and faster till you come to the end and you have to jump off with a
running start to maintain momentum.

At 15 minutes to boarding time our girl housemate decided
she wanted to change so that she wouldn’t feel so cold when we got to Oslo. We
sat and waited, boarding was called and no sign of her. We waited some more.
Then they called our names, mine and the boy housemate and asked us to board or
our luggage would be thrown off. We jumped into activity hoping she had somehow
boarded, unable to call her since our phone wouldn’t work without simcards.

It was 5 degrees in Amsterdam and the walk was the coldest I
had had till then. The wind whipped my face and chilled me. Perhaps more
chilling was the fact that I knew we had left her behind. I kept telling myself
there was nothing I could have done, maybe there wasn’t maybe there was. On the
plane we looked around and reported the mishap to the steward serving, he told
us not to worry. Apparently missing your plane
and getting lost in Amsterdam is to be expected, well…

Friday, February 3, 2012

It’s
easy to die here. Its dark, its cold it’s white. Sometimes when am walking I
get distracted by the oblivion that is snow. White, white, white.

There
are places where the quiet is almost overwhelming, there is no sound for what
feels like miles and miles. In this different~from~any~other~experience-I-have-had
atmosphere it seems more real to talk in terms of miles than kilometres, yards
than metres, though it’s a wholly American obsession having nothing to do with
the Nordic folk. The wind is the only whisper you hear at these times, there is
not a breath of another human being in any direction for any distance. You can
forget that civilisation exists in those moments except that there are
footsteps and that even in this most hidden of outback the occasional Norwegian
will bump into you, raise their heads in acknowledgement, or startlement more
likely, maybe squeeze out a high-pitched “hei.” before they go on their way.

The
silence is good for thoughts, it’s amazing for those. You stand and fix your
eyes on the sky which looks just like the ground which looks just like the
falling snow and in that moment that's all there is you and nature. There is a
park near where I live that speaks of this perfectly, it’s near the mountain
and you can hear from afar the running of water down that structure. The snow
is virtually undisturbed, Euclidean in parts, geometrical like a sculptor had
stood and taken his scissor-hands to it. It’s a place that thoughts can range
free and wild, not constrained by buildings or people, unbound by sounds and
noises, unfettered from interruptions and distractions. Except that when you
stand there your legs are nearly buried in the snow and soon this starts to
bite through your shoes and leave your toes hurting and hurting.

I
looked at the snowflakes disappearing into the blackwater of the sea once. They
fell from the heavens a manner of manna. They danced their way to the ground,
small unique, perfect and then they got swallowed up by the sea. Behind them is
an endless line of others falling too. I tried to stare straight ahead, to see
to the horizon but gentle persuasion would have none of that, it kept bowing
me, look down at how we float, oh so gently, oh so wonderfully. Look how we
disappear, oh so quickly, oh so permanently not having left a mark on the
earth.

It’s
easy to stay indoors, too easy. Everything is skewed towards you not leaving
the house. You don't want to put on your gloves, you don’t want to put on your scarf, you don’t want to put on
your hat, to put on your woollen leggings, to put on your jacket. You don't
want to face the cold because in spite of all these preparations some of it
still steals its way up your back, some of it still wraps around your legs,
some of it still haunts and hunts your face. Some of it still does. You don't
want to walk through the snow. And it’s dark most of the time. Endless fiction
and non-fiction has been pumped out about snowstorms and someone crawling for
miles, dragged by dogs, drugged by willpower, beaten by the elements, bitten by the cold. All he needs is
a cabin for the night, the sight of another human being, some food, water,
warmth. It makes more sense to me now.

Inside
its warm and toasty, inside its perfect, the yellow light bulb, the book to read, the food to cook and eat, the
thoughts to think. It’s not that far from home, it is a little Kenya. Then you
are tired, I am, I get tired pretty quickly. When am outside this problem is
solved but I enter and I take a glass of hot Ribena, I begin to read and I
drift away, we prepare food for 1 and a half hours, eat for one and then sit
back contented before anyone has the energy to get up and move, to clean the
dishes, to clear the table. Short bursts of discussion range, heavy issues,
necessity of assimilation and integration of cultures for immigrants, the
problems with legality of abortion, the evolution of religions and whether that
actually exists or can happen. This makes me think and question a lot of my
fast held beliefs then it makes me tired.

So
it’s easy to die here. It’s easy to crawl into bed at ten am and fall fast
asleep, it’s easier to wake up nine/ten hours later and whistle away a whole
day in the preparation of food. It’s easy to miss most of what Norway has to
offer. You have to be active we are told over and over. A social life here does
not materialise out of thin air. It is the preserve of those who strive for it
who stretch out their arms and grab it. You have to be active. You have to
leave the home that's encircling you and telling you to stay. You have to walk
out in the snow and cold. You have to look for activity like you would a speck
in the snow, an eye in the ice.

Yesterday{Monday}
I did nothing at all and the feelings of guilt about letting a full day pass
have bled all over this post. It’s easy to die here. Or more specifically not
to live. The snow does that, the cold does that, the clothing does that. But
there's a lot pulling you out at the same time. The sun has begun to shine
through the clouds and what a sun it is. Fighting through the white and shine. And
one day I saw the sun and the moon occupy the same patch of sky. It was
strange, it reminded me of that powerpuff girls episode where the mayor says

“there’s
a ball of fire in the sky.”

“it’s
called the sun.” everyone choruses. But in that show the emperor was also the
boy who saw him naked and was proved right(comet shower.)

It
looked like the sun. it shoe, it was round, but it moved too fast, I could look
at it and it seemed so close. And if that was the sun, what was the other thing
that was lighting up a section of cloud. Then it hit me. Moon and sun, together
and not for an eclipse, not to break dawn and not at twilight(couldn’t help
myself.)

So
there’s a lot to see, a lot to feel in this magic snowonderland and its out
there just past the window.